Arthur J. Goldberg*

Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations

"Only in this country could the son of immigrants be named to the highest court in the land."

Arthur Goldberg was the youngest of eight children born to an immigrant Russian-Jewish family. His family came to the United States in the late 1890s and settled in the poverty-stricken slums of Chicago. Goldberg was the only member of his family who attended high school, from which he graduated valedictorian. Working nights and weekends, he struggled through college and Northwestern Law School, from which he graduated at the top of his class. He is credited with having masterminded the AFL-CIO merger. He was Secretary of Labor during the Kennedy Administration, was a member of the U. S. Supreme Court, and was a representative to the U. N. In his career, he fought for collective bargaining and against Communist influences.